Ex-patient describes mistreatment by staff

STATE: Striking patients unacceptable

Jan. 18, 2008

Written by

ALAN GUENTHER

MANAHAWKIN BUREAU

WINSLOW — As a patient at the Ancora Psychiatric Hospital, Meghan Boland says a staff member dragged her into a bathroom, pushed her down, and stomped on her face with a boot.

Police photographs taken after the March 2003 incident, Boland says, clearly show the outline of the boot on her bruised and swollen face. But an attorney convinced her to drop charges against the worker, Boland said.

Today, Boland is feeling better. She's seven months pregnant and says she has learned to manage her schizophrenia. But she remains bitter about the time she spent as a patient in the state's largest mental health institution.

"I was treated like I was just an animal," Boland said. "And I wasn't. I was sick, and I needed help. I needed to learn about my mental illness."

State Human Services spokeswoman Ellen Lovejoy said she could neither confirm or deny Boland's charges because the state cannot identify or discuss any mentally ill patient.

But she said the state would condemn any violence toward any patient.

"It's unacceptable for a staff member to use violence to bring a patient under control," Lovejoy said. "It's simply unacceptable."

Boland said she was a patient in Larch Hall, Ward B.

She acknowledges that she fought with another patient, Debbie.

"Me and her fought. I don't even remember. Something over food," she said. But the fight was over when the staff member came for her to administer what Boland says is Ancora's peculiar form of justice.

After she was stomped, the staff worker kept her job, Boland said, but was reassigned to work elsewhere in the hospital.

"They move them and give people back their jobs," Boland complained, "because they're in a union. They should only hire people who have experience and education in the field, not just people coming off the street looking for work."

Union leader Robert Ruffin said, "We're not saying that all of our staff are perfect. But we are saying that we have excellent staff here."

He knows patients have been mistreated at Ancora, Ruffin said.

"We can't tell you all that happens. What we get as a union is whatever they've hired and whatever they've made full-time. Hell, we've had managers mistreat patients."